Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Dec. 10
By Diana Aliyeva– Trend:
The plans for the development of rail transport in Uzbekistan include the transportation of foreign trade goods via the Baku-Tbilisi-Akhalkalaki-Kars railway with an opportunity to reach the ports as part of the pilot program.
It is planned to participate in the creation of the Azerbaijan-Georgia-Turkey-EU countries transit corridor by determining the volumes of transportation of foreign trade and transit cargoes.
These plans are included in the "Comprehensive Program for Improving Transport Infrastructure and Diversification of Foreign Trade Routes for the Carriage of Goods for 2018-2022", which is part of the Uzbek president’s decree # PP-3422 adopted on December 2, 2017.
The first steps on the implementation of these plans are attributed to the first quarter of 2018.
The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway was commissioned in Azerbaijan on October 30, 2017.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as well as the heads of the governments of Kazakhstan, Georgia and Uzbekistan, attended the opening ceremony.
The main task of the new railway is to connect the railways of three countries, namely, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey, by creating an alternative corridor from Central Asia through the South Caucasus to Europe.
The railway’s peak capacity will be 17 million tons of cargo per year. At an initial stage, this figure will be one million passengers and 6.5 million tons of cargo.
The total length of the BTK railway is 826 kilometers.